Congress President Sonia Gandhi’s son in law Robert Vadra is recently making the headlines. A few days back the news channel Times Now claimed they have proof of Robert having relations with absconding arms dealer Sanjay Bhandari.
In 2012 also there were talks that Robert Vadra, Priyanka Gandhi‘s husband hold connections with arms dealer Sanjay Bhandari, however, Robert denied all the allegations that time and said that he did not have any financial relations with him. The media channel claimed that Bhandari had reserved air tickets for Vadra however, Times Now did not know if Vadra had travelled on these tickets or not. The channel has claimed that he has documentary evidence that Vadra and Bhandari have been in touch with each other.
Times Now has claimed that for a foreign trip of Vadra in August 2012, an international Travel agency at Paharganj booked the ticket. The channel also said that it has a copy of two tickets reserved by the agency. The channel told that the travel agency sent two emails to Bhandari, one of which was a Emirates flight worth Rs. 8 lakhs. According to the channel, these emails were sent on August 7, 2012. The date for the first ticket was August 13, 2012. The channel claims that according to the second ticket sent by the travel agent on August 17, 2012, Vishal Bajpai had booked a ticket in Swiss flight to Nice (France) to Zurich (Switzerland).
Income Tax Department raided the locations of Bhandari in April last year. Chanel has claimed that Bhandari made these tickets for Vadra when the Swiss company pilots were investigating the brokerage in Jet Trainer deal against him. The fact that one of the tickets booked for Vadra was to Zurich, it is being speculated that he might have some involvement in the Pilatus deal. though nothing is confirmed yet.
After the investigation conducted by the Times Now, the channel had sent a questionnaire with 10 specific questions about the e-mail trail to Robert Vadra, however, no reply has been sent either by Robert or his lawyers till now.
As per the latest updates, the absconding arms dealer Sanjay Bhandari has admitted his tied to Robert Vadra. The Enforcement Directorate confronted Bhandari with the proof to which he admitted that he had links Robert Vadra. Bhandari also said that he and Robert werebusiness associates and he had dealt with the latter in certain capacities.
The ED during the raids had recovered certain paper and in those papers, the close association of Sanjay Bhandari had come to fore with Robert Vadra, like him being in charge for the maintenance of a flat that Robert allegedly owned in London.
Meanwhile, taking advantage of the allegations on Sonia’s son in law and the Gandhian family being tight lipped about it, BJP hit the Congress party regarding the matter. BJP on Tuesday questioned that why the senior Congress leadership including the President and the Vice-President is keeping a studied silence on the Robert Vadra matter.
Responding to the allegations made by BJP, Congress on Tuesday said that the BJP was targeting Robert, just to divert attention from the case of Jay Shah. A few days back, some allegations were made on BJP Party President Amit Shah‘s son Jay Shah.
On 8 Oct, the media company- The Wire had published a post alleging that a company named Temple Enterprise, co-owned by Jay Shah had made 16,000 times after” Narendra Modi became the prime minister of India. Former Economic Times journalist Rohini Singh alleged that the “revenue from the company owned by Amit Shah’s son jumped from just Rs 50,000 to over Rs 80,00,00,000 in a single year.”
Reacting to the news published by The Wire, Jay Shah, on Monday filed a defamation case against the news portal. The application filed by Jay requested “criminal action against the respondents for defaming and tarnishing the reputation of the complainant through an article, which is scandalous, frivolous, misleading, derogatory,libellouss and consisting of several defamatory statements.”
Congress spokesperson Sanjay Jha, in his statement to the press, said that “This is a politically motivated effort by the BJP to divert attention from the serious allegation against Amit Shah’s son Jay Shah, whose income grew by 16,000 times in one year, and BJP is trying to divert public attention.”
He further alleged that the Amit Shah and his son were suppressing the freedom of the media and added that they are scared and hence are not allowing any investigation to happen. He also informed that even if the BJP tried to hide behind by raising the matter of Robert Vadra, Congress will not leave the matter, they will take the issue to the streets and do a nationwide campaign to expose the corruption of Amit Shah’s son.”